LIVE SHOW TODAY… more below, but first…
I try not to get to mad over things, but lately I have been super ticked off by this message I keep hearing.
Eat Plant Based… FARMING plants and NOT COWS is Better For The Planet.
If you want to eat a plant based diet, by all means go ahead. Just don’t bad mouth my cows while you do it.
For a decade now K and I have been involved in small scale farming, on our own property, as well as spending the last 8 years visiting other farms and interviewing them on site. One thing we have seen time and time again…
When managed properly… Animals IMPROVE the land around us.
Let’s look at just one tiny cycle on our own homestead, and see what we can learn from it… Our chicken tractors.
Chickens love to eat bugs. To do so, they need to be outside, scratching through the leaves, eating grass, ticks, grubs, dirt, and whatever else they might find OUTSIDE the barn walls. So to be sure they get to do what they love, AND not be FOX FOOD… we raise meat birds in CHICKEN TRACTORS each year.
That system mimics birds in nature (if you ever have observed a flock of wild turkeys working a field, meat chickens look the same moving through our pastures) without the same loss to predation birds in nature face.
The best thing about this system? How much better our land is BECAUSE of our chickens!
Last year we had a bit of a drought early in the summer. The grasses were drying up (trust me, having to feed my cows pasture… I watch closely the grass growth).
But there was one area on the farm the grass was LUSH even during a small drought… THE CHICKEN TRACTORS PATH!
You could literally see the rows where the chicken tractors traveled long after we were done with our meat birds, because the pasture there was dark green, and taller than the surrounding pasture the chickens didn’t pass through.
Growing Chickens on soil…. they give back to the soil.
Growing soy beans, corn, peas, beans…. All those plants TAKE from the soil.
That is ok, we need plants and plants need stuff to grow… BUT If not managed properly, land that consistently produces crops can become deficient in some really important stuff… and that is why farmers keep pumping fertilizers and minerals back into the land.
ANIMALS DO THE OPPOSITE. Yes, they feed from the land, but they give MORE BACK!
Animals poop, pee, and CRUSH! Behind the herd of cows I graze through my field, you will find pee and manure full of minerals and nutrients that are given back to the land, and crushed vegetation that ISN’T digested. These crushed plants decay, feeding the soil, and creatures the soil needs (like WORMS!).
This cycle is so powerful in improving the land we grow on, we have decided to extend our grazing season, to YEAR ROUND to take advantage of it all year!
And YES… that includes the snowy northern winter we are currently in.
In our latest video (click below to watch) we talk all about our new winter grazing system!
Eli from Kencove joins us to teach us about the benefits of winter grazing, explains how we can save time, money, AND THE PLANET by running our animals over the soil we grow on year round, even in the snowy winter!
I am so excited to see our hard work in the field this winter pay off this summer in the form of lush green pastures, and big healthy beef and dairy cows!
Speaking of hard work paying off… Today we are going to recap our HUNTING SEASON LIVE!
There were some serious ups and downs… but let’s just say the freezer is full, and if you want to hear the stories from the woods this fall join me Today, Friday Feb 4th, at 1:00 PM Eastern Time to talk Hunting!
Don’t miss it.. Something happened that NEVER HAPPENED TO US BEFORE… it was an awesome day in the woods!
Hope to catch you at the live show, and hope you can get some animals out into your fields this spring!
Aust
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